After an ongoing boycott of Nestlé for marketing baby milk formula as a substitute for breastfeeding in developing countries, the company did what can best be described as e-damage control – it invited 20 influential "mom and dad" bloggers to an all-expenses-paid trip to its corporate headquarters in California. The hope, presumably, was that the bloggers would report back positively about the trip and the company. Nestlé even set up a Twitter tag, #nestlefamily, to help things along.

This kind of arrangement isn't at all uncommon – companies and advertisers are eager to harness the power of bloggers, and are more than willing to pay for the prospect of positive reviews and posts. But in the US, the days of corporations buying favourable content online may be at an end. The US regulator, the Federal Trade Commission, has released guidelines this week that would require bloggers – and even people using Twitter and Facebook – to disclose relationships they have with companies or advertisers, as well as any free products or payments they have received. Not doing so could result in fines of up to $11,000.

Richard Cleland, the assistant director of advertising practices at the commission, was quoted as saying that the test is if "the relationship were known between the blogger and the advertiser, [it] would affect the credibility of the endorsement".

As a blogger myself, I'm decidedly pro anything that increases the credibility of bloggers – after all, there are only so many times you can hear a snarky comment about "bloggers in pyjamas" before you start to take it personally. Guidelines that encourage accountability have the potential to do wonders for a job that's often dismissed as unprofessional and unreliable. But the vagueness of the rules – and the unrealistic notion that they can be fairly enforced – is troubling.

For instance, I often receive books from publishers hoping for a review on my site. According to Cleland – who was interviewed by literary blogger Edward Champion – I should be returning every one of these books after reviewing them. Keeping the books would count as "compensation".

"If a blogger received enough books, he could open up a used bookstore," said Cleland.

Newspapers, however, are allowed to keep the books they review. Jeff Jarvis, a media blogger and the author of What Would Google Do?, points out on his blog that people at publications frequently get so-called freebies and no one thinks anything of it. "I've long believed that ethics alone should compel them to disclose. But the Federal Trade Commission doesn't," he writes.

Jarvis also points out that the internet itself is not a medium, it's a place where people talk and connect. "I imagine that virtually no one on Facebook thinks they're making media. They're connecting. They're talking. So for the FTC to go after bloggers and social media – as they explicitly do – is the same as sending a government goon into Denny's to listen to the conversations in the corner booth and demand that you disclose that your Uncle Vinnie owns the pizzeria whose product you just endorsed."

There is a vast difference between a "professional" blogger and someone operating socially on Facebook or Twitter. But there's also a big difference between bloggers with large audiences and those just writing for a few friends. And that's the real problem with these guidelines – they're too simple a solution for something as complex and nuanced as internet content.

So while I wholeheartedly endorse the idea of increasing bloggers' credibility, I'm not convinced that this is the best way to ensure transparency online. We can take some solace, however, in the fact that the web does have a way of policing itself. After all, it was bloggers and tweeters who ended up calling out Nestlé for trying to buy the affection of the bloggers they brought to California. The Nestlé Family Twitter blog has been inundated with anti-Nestlé messages, and now thousands of people have joined Facebook groups dedicated to boycotting the company – a stark warning for other businesses considering a similar route.

Ultimately, it can't be up to the Federal Trade Commission to regulate bloggers' accountability – that's something we have to do for ourselves. If bloggers want to be taken seriously, we should be transparent about being compensated for content: it's really that simple. Our credibility is in our own hands, and is determined by every post we write. And those aren't the rules, just common sense.